The budgets mentioned in this document refer to the agreed budgets by the board. These change throughout the year as circumstances change.

This page is for those wanting to know more about what we do and ways that they can get involved. If you find something interesting let us know and we can put you in touch with the people involved.

We prepared this draft, at the request of the board, after discussion with staff with a view to putting at the foreground activities that will develop our volunteer base through activities and workstreams that encourage participation and develop new generations of community activists willing and able to take on the development of the chapter.

It is always a work in progress, espcially regarding risk factors and who is responsible for budget areas. The basic figures though are there to work on.

We will continue to support the Wikimedia Toolserver, which is operated by Wikimedia Deutschland, throughout this financial period. The Toolserver is widely used by the Wikimedia community to enable automated editing, statistics and other tools to keep Wikipedia running smoothly. This support will be provided via a grant to Wikimedia Deutschland.

The Wikimedia Foundation is currently establishing the Wikimedia Labs (WL), which will incorporate the role of the current Toolserver. However, the WL currently do not have the technical capacity to host the projects that are currently operating on the Toolserver. As such, this grant helps ensure that the facilities provided by the Toolserver will continue throughout this WMUK financial year.

We will ensure that our two contract developers pay due attention to the work carried out by the Toolserver project.

UPDATE - The Toolserver project is now closing and our £10,000 contribution was declined and we are now considering how it should be used.

For background information based on expenditure in previous years, please see:

We are supporting the development of a Toolserver/MediaWiki extension that provides the facility to upload media files en mass to the Wikimedia projects - specifically content that is provided via content partnerships from partner organisations. The development of this extension is being led by Europeana, and is being financially supported by the budgets of Wikimedia France, Wikimedia Nederlands and Wikimedia Deutschland, and is also being supported by the Wikimedia Foundation to ensure that the resulting code is deployed on the Wikimedia projects.

This is a strategically important project on the basis that it aims to remove the bottleneck constraining the expansion of Wikimedia Commons that is due to the lack of an appropriate facility to upload and appropriately categorize significant quantities of media files (i.e. upload batches in excess of 100 files) to the project.

This project was started in 2012, and is expected to conclude in 2014 with the successful deployment of the extension to the Wikimedia projects. Fae is the Board's representative on the steering committee, and as such has responsibility for providing reports and financial recommendations to the WMUK board on this topic.

Our initial commitment was for €160,000, (approx £131,200) over two years. We estimate that we will have contributed £31,609 so far leaving a residue of £99,591. Given our reduced budget and the real possibility the project may be scaled down we are proposing a commitment of £60,000.

The risk to WMUK is that the project does not proceed if other chapters currently encountering financial uncertainty decided to withdraw. This could mean the project will not have made any progress and the funds to date wasted.

UPDATE = The project has run during the year but other chapters have not been able to continue their funding. WMUK has decided not to fund the project directly in the next financial year but to support a pan-chapter bid to the Wikimedia Foundation.

This provides equipment that volunteers and visitors can use when visiting the office or attending events. A good example would be spare laptops for training events, or a mobile wi-fi hub. For more information on 2013-14 plan, please see:

The CE is proposing a continuation in this budget to enable continued capacity building. The Moodle Virtual Learning Environment consists of a separate £2K in the next section. The 2012-13 has trained 22 people. We are hoping to deliver another two TtT sessions in 2013-14 doubling this number and delivering the courses outside London to support our reach.

Risks - that we cannot find enough people of sufficient quality to train, that those who have trained do not volunteer as trainers at our events.

This covers everything from "Introduction to Wikipedia" booklets, mugs, and t-shirts to pin badges - any free materials to support outreach events, activities, and the Wikimedia UK volunteer community in general. This type of material is essential for our programmes, and a general supply is held in the office. The aim should be to source merchandise that is of good quality, so that we can avoid importing material. Having this sourced locally means that we do not have to carry a large stock.

A specific budget to support the work of Welsh Wicipedians especially those working in the Welsh Language, excluding the 'Living Paths' project. The developments in Wales in 2012 have been dramatic. MonmouthpediA helped galvanise the Welsh Wicipedians, especially those writing in the Welsh language. Important meetings have been held with representatives of the Welsh government and GLAM sector. We believe this funding is crucial to developing the work of the current volunteers and creating a new generation of Welsh based editors in English and Welsh. In addition, a wealth of material is likely to be released under open licence.

Living Paths is a project that aims to empower local communities with simple Wikipedia web-authoring skills in all coastal counties that border the Wales Coast Path. Wikipedia articles will be developed on the Wales Coast Path similar to Monmouth. There is a lack of information readily available on "The Greatest Region on Earth": the Wales Coast Path. Guidebooks and maps exist but are not available in a wide range of languages and are bulky and heavy. Visitors and local people would benefit not only from better information but also a simple way of finding it. So far, communities in Wales find it difficult to share information about their locality such as historic buildings, circular paths, geographical features and other points of interest. The information is published in local history pamphlets but these are expensive to distribute therefore difficult to source. Publishing online is possible but can be difficult due to the complexities of web-authoring for most people. The project addresses this problem by teaching simple skills – how to edit on Wikipedia. Local people know best about interesting places to visit, sights to see and facilities available such as picnic areas, parking and safety issues. They also have stories to tell that bring places and history to life.

To support outreach projects aimed at increasing participation in the Wikimedia movement especially amongst women, or involving any minority ethnic, LGBT, linguistic or other community in the UK, which might not otherwise be funded. This has proved difficult to spend this year but as capacity has gradually increased the CE feels that this is a budget area that will be easily spent in 2013-14 hence keeping it at the same level. It is an important part of our aim to develop volunteer capacity.

Risks - that there continues to be insufficient take-up. That our capacity increases to a level where this amount is too small.

Total: £13,125 including 6% pension contribution from WMUK and Employer's National Insurance.

Budget responsibility: Chief Executive (as this is a staff post)

Primary contact: Daria Cybulska

This will be a new part-time staff member, who will be responsible for supporting our GLAM programme. They will be appointed circa February 2013. The exact role of this staff member will be defined in the future, and will take into account our existing staff resources and the abilities and experience of the individual that will be appointed to this role but here is a draft job description. They will be expected to liaise and support our GLAM Committee, support the GLAMwiki conference, work with GLAM stakeholders and partners, help develop our GLAM outreach programmes.

Following on from the success of the 2010 GLAM Conference run in the UK WMUK is keen to host another major international event, this time in cooperation with the British Library. This budget will allow for venue costs, supporting the travel of speakers, the attendance of delegates from the international volunteer community and extra staffing to arrange and organise the event.

Our GLAM work has developed and matured considerably since the last conference and been picked up internationally. This conference will enable the sharing of good practice and the development of new ideas.

The conference was originally scheduled for Autumn 2012 but capacity did not allow it to happen. It was instead replaced by a GLAMcamp in September 2012.

Extending the GLAM work through more local and national events. To include 2 local GLAMcamp-style events if possible.In 2012-13, apart from the events in Monmouth, this has been a budget that needed more activity. It is hoped with the extra capacity that this amount can easily be spent and encourage volunteer activity and growth.

Risk: That not enough volunteer come forward to organise and support these events.

We have begun to part-fund Wikimedian in Residence positions. The number of positions depends on negotiations with partner institutions about how a Wikimedian in Residence fits with their organisation and how much funding they will make available.This budget can therefore stretch to cover different numbers of WiR with varying length contracts. This is the first year we are funding these projects in a formal way.

These posts build strong bridges with institutions and also act as a focus for community involvement and development.

Risks. There are many risks in such shared appointments, particularly of reputation and conflicts of interest. WMUK is putting in place contracts to protect both parties and the WiR themselves.

We have strong hopes of continuing this work despite delays to implementation in 2012-13. There have been serious delays owing to re-organisations in the Scottish GLAM sector and people changing responsibilities - the planned year long Wikimedian in Residence has not been established. We will work on other options, funding a position to work with the Scottish cultural sector to develop links with the Wikipedian community in Scotland and its projects.

Risks - Continuing difficulties with the Scottish GLAM sector leas to more delays.

We will support the digitization and release under an open license of cultural content, particularly where this content will be used in Wikipedia and on Wikimedia Commons. We will aim to have a significant number of culturally significant media files uploaded to Wikimedia Commons in 2013.

This has been a difficult budget to spend but increasing activity will lead to more opportunities.

UPDATE: WMUK has decided that digitisation is often costly and should only be used in circumstances where the benefit is proven. UK institutions now have access to a central fund for digitisation. WMUK will not have special funding for this in next year's budget but will consider special circumstances.

Building on the achievements of 2012. There is strong interest from the Imperial War Museum in supporting a WiR specially to work on the WWI centenary events. Thus funding would be dedicated to this post. It will be expected that the fundholder will be the centre of initiatives to involve the community and develop participation.

Risks: That the institutional work overwhelms the work targeted at our mission.

UPDATE: Our partner institution has been unable to commit to this project this year owing to being too stretched. We hope that this can happen next year but would still like to hold some related events. Suggestions please to Jonathan Cardy.

Total: £13,125 including 6% pension contribution from WMUK and Employer's National Insurance.

Budget responsibility: Chief Executive

Primary contact: Daria Cybulska

This will be a new part-time staff member, who will be responsible for organising our education programme. They will be appointed circa February 2013.

The exact role of this staff member will be defined in the future, and will take into account our existing staff resources and the abilities and experience of the individual that will be appointed to this role. In particular they will be expected to liaise and support our Education Committee, support the Education Conference, work with educational stakeholders and partners, help develop our outreach education programme.

Includes Freshers Fair stalls, Campus Ambassador training events, and other activity with staff & students, including associated volunteer expenses. 2012's programme was slow to take off but this remains a key area for the recruitment of editors and volunteers. Building on the work at Imperial college and Cambridge we hope to grow this activity next year.

Risk: not enough continuity between university year groups to keep the groups going.

We have placed what is in effect a Wikimedian in Residence with Jisc, called Jisc Wikimedia Ambassador, with the aim to to encourage a range of audiences (librarians, teachers, researchers and students) within learning and research to engage with Wikimedia UK and Wikimedia projects. The outputs of the project will be events, case studies and other documentation. It's a part funded post lasting approximately 9 months.

We will further expand our existing Microgrants and Macrogrants programme and support members of the community to propose initiatives they want to take forward. These programs will offer a range of grants for innovative new projects that aren't included in other budget lines. Microgrants are small grants for between £5 and £250, and have been used by volunteers in the past to purchase research books to use as references in Wikipedia articles, for travel to events such as the Titanic anniversary. Macrogrants are for grants over £250, typically up to £2,000, and have included activities such as Geovation (proposing to dramatically increase the coverage of Welsh coastal paths in many language Wikipedias).

This has severely underspent this year but with our increasing outreach capacity this should be a problem solved in 2013-14. There is a big opportunity to expand the remit of the grants.

Risk: Unacceptable conflicts of interest. Funding either over or underestimates demand.

UPDATE: Suggestions please to Katie Chan as we are underspending on this budget and it offer good opportunities to improve content.

We will continue to provide financial support for individuals, from the UK and the rest of the world, to participate in Wikimedia events like Wikimania, the Wikimedia Chapters meeting, Wikimedia Loves Monuments, Wikisym and GLAMcamp. The choice of Hong Kong for Wikimania 2013 will put a strain on this budget. This budget was easily spent in 2012-13.

Combining our Annual General Meeting with a series of presentations about the Wikimedia projects and chapter activities, following up on the success of our 2012 conference. Scheduled for Lincoln and hoping to extend over two days.

Initial financial support for a London bid. This may include any costs surrounding the setting up of a bank account, or legal advice. It may also include travel or hotel costs where necessary, but is not intended to act as a 'salary' or 'fee' to the bid team. In the event of the bid not being successful, we expect that an event of some size will still be held - this will then be used to support set-up costs for that event.

UPDATE: An extra £3,500 was added to this budget to offer administrative support to the Wikimania delivery team.

WMUK has an established office a number of employees. These currently comprise of our Chief Executive; Office and Development Manager; Programme Manager; Communications Organiser; and Fundraiser. We anticipate our office to grow to include a number of additional staff members over this financial year.

The cost of these employees as described below includes the salary, employer National Insurance (X% of base salary) and employer pension payments (6% of base salary). We have increased the salaries of our existing staff this year to incorporate both the increased costs of living due to inflation (currently estimated as 2%) and to take into account the increased experience that they have of the Wikimedia movement and their responsibilities within WMUK's office (to be decided the Board for our CE, and by our CE for all other staff members).

We recruit new staff members via a process of open advertisement, standardized application forms (which include declarations of interest and separate Equal Opportunity monitoring forms), and shortlisting and interviews, which are coordinated by our Chief Executive and are supervised by our Trustees.

(NB: the roles described here require substantial improvement to reflect what our staff are actually doing!)

Total: £63,205 including 6% pension contribution from WMUK and Employer's National Insurance.

Our Chief Executive is the most senior staff member of Wikimedia UK, who is in charge of overseeing the operations of the Chapter and its staff. The Chief Executive reports to the Board of Trustees. He has responsibility for ensuring our strategic and professional development; day-to-day management and coordination of our activities and finances; and providing line-management for our staff.

Total: £33,447 including 6% pension contribution from WMUK and Employer's National Insurance.

Our Communications Organiser has responsibility for our internal and external communications. This includes our communications with those that contact the Chapter from both external organisations and the Wikimedia community.

Total: £25,000–29,000 including 6% pension contribution from WMUK and Employer's National Insurance. For budget purposes estimated at gross £27,500

This will be a new staff member, who will be responsible for working with the community to support our volunteer activities. (Katie Chan was appointed in March.)

There has been a great deal of support for this post. This holder would build on our current activities to create a UKwide network of wikimeets, editathons, training events and other wiki related activities. They would be a prime leader on budgets that support community activities and ensure that support and communications from the staff are carefully targeted.

The exact role of this staff member will be defined in the future, and will take into account our existing staff resources and the abilities and experience of the individual but here is a draft Job Description.

Risk: That the postholder becomes swallowed by the enormity of the task. That the postholder does not gain support of the community.

We have an established office that is located in Development House, Old Street, London. This is a building that hosts a large number of other charitable organisations, and provides a very friendly and supportive environment for our staff members. It is also located in a very tech-friendly area of London, which also hosts such organisations as Google UK and Mozilla UK.

We provide desks for each of our full-time staff members, as well as visiting volunteers and representatives of other Wikimedia organisations and partner organisations.

Each serviced desk in our office costs £320 per month, or £3840 per year. We are currently budgeting for 9 desks, which sums to £34560.00

This budget comprises an average of £750 per staff member. This is intended to cover:

Attendance for three staff members at Wikimania

Attendance of the Chief Executive at the annual Chapters meeting

Visits for (2) staff members to the Wikimedia Foundation

Visits for (2) staff members to Wikimedia chapter offices

The aim is for this to cover staff travel to events which do not fall under other budgets. For example, staff travel to required attendance at a GLAM event, or a board meeting, would come under those budgets, rather than this one.

This budget line comprises of an average of £500 per staff member to train our staff to best fulfil their roles and support their professional development. This may include (but is not limited to) such activities as CiviCRM training; media relations training; etc.

UPDATE; This budget is likely to overspend this year but reflects the number of new staff with special needs.

Accountancy fees cover the costs of our annual accounts and audit, quarterly management accounts and additional consultancy work on financial systems and controls. It does not cover fees for legal advice, rather, it covers accountancy and audit fees only. It may also be used to pay our annual taxes.

This is to cover all of the costs of moving to our own secure server, managed by the office. The main item in this budget is expected to be the server itself - developer costs will come from a different budget. This will ensure that we have full data security in time for next year's fundraiser.

UPDATE: This is on hold as not yet in a position for a complete migration. Being discussed by Tech Committee

The costs of the fundraiser include many things. This does not include the cost of the Fundraising Organiser (see staff costs). This year we will also be paying £2,000 data protection insurance at the insistence of the Foundation.

At the end of 2012/13, we expect to have approximately £100k as 'reserves' - £85k in one account, and £15k in another. We will increase this considerably to match the risk we undertake.

We plan to hold £187k in reserves this year, most of which will come from our underspend in 2012/13. This is equivalent to three months at full operating costs or considerably longer (estimate five or six months) as wind-down costs.

The aim is to ensure continuity and that the Charity is protected should there be a financial catastrophe.

UPDATE: We anticipate underspend this year and so some of the money taken from reserves can be returned at year end.